vague figures slinking hurriedly along the side of the
house opposite. From the darkness there came quick replies. A
coruscating poniard of spiteful flame stabbed into the night. Don Jesu
whirled on buckling legs and pitched sidewise to the street. A second
stab of sparky flame split the darkness and Robideau reeled back into
the arms of his panicky soldiers. As the heavy reports rolled through
the town they seemed to be a signal, for on the southern outskirts of
Santa Fe gun after gun crashed in a rippling, spasmodic volley. A few
stragglers in the all but deserted streets raised a dreaded cry and fled
to the nearest shelter. The cry was taken up and sent rioting through
the city; doors were doubly barred and the soldiers in the barracks,
safer behind the thick mud walls than they would be out in the dark open
against such an enemy, slammed shut the ponderous door and frantically
built barricades of everything movable.

"_Los Tejanos!_" rolled the panicky cries. "_Los Tejanos! Los
Tejanos!_"

The wailing warning of the coming of a plague could not have held more
terror. Gone were the vaunted boastings and the sneers; gone was the
swaggering bravado of the dashing _caballeros_, who had said what they
would do to any Texan force that dared to brave the wrath of the
defenders of San Francisco de la Santa Fe. Gone was all faith, never too
sincere, in ancient _escopeta_ and rusty blunderbuss, now that the
occasion was close at hand to measure them against the devil weapons of
hardy Texan fighting men, of the breed that had stood off, bloody day
after bloody day, four thousand Mexican regulars before a little adobe
church, now glorified for all the ages yet to come. To panicky minds
came magic words of evil portent; the Alamo and San Jacinto. To evil
consciences, bowed with guilt, came burning memories of that sick and
starved Texan band that had walked through winter days and shivered
through winter nights from Santa Fe to the capital, two thousand miles
of suffering, and every step a torture. Texan ears had swung from a
piece of rusty wire to feed the cruel conceit of a swarthy tyrant.

"_Los Tejanos! Los Tejanos! Los Tejanos!_"

At the _palacio_ a human brute recoiled before a barred door between him
and a desperate captive, his honeyed cajolings turning to acid on his
lying tongue. No longer did he hear the measured tread of the palace
guards, who secretly exulted as they fled and left him defenseless.

"_Los Tejan